Damaris, meanwhile, was altogether at ease as to her own circumstances.
No doubt ever entered her mind as to the legacy bequeathed by her
grandfather; it was more than enough for all her wants, and she
understood that she could live at Les Hameaux easily, all her lifetime,
if she chose. But without any apprehension for her future, she was not
without that unrest which is the inseparable companion of all ambition.
The remembrance of the wife of Othmar was like a thorn in her side:
she had an eager, passionate, thirsty desire to justify herself in
the sight of that great lady, to become something which could not be
derided or denied or set aside with contempt. The memory of that day
under the roof of St. Pharamond was continually with her, in all its
humiliation and its disappointment, and its sharp cruel sense of being
a barbarian amongst the highest grace and culture that were possible
to human life and manners. It had been a glimpse into an unknown land
never to be forgotten; the gates to it had been shut in her face,
almost as soon as opened; but the dreams which had come to her through
them remained with her, and pursued her sleeping and waking.
She threw herself into the resources of study with a kind of passion.
In books, she thought, lay all the secrets of the spells of power.
When he had bidden her wed a farmer of La Beauce he had wounded her
in a way that she could not forget; not because she despised that
homelier life of the husbandman, but because she thought that he
deemed her incapable of the higher life of the intellect or the soul.
She had been violently uprooted from all her childish associations,
and severed from all the habits, thoughts, and attachments which had
been hers from birth. The shock of that separation had intensified and
deepened the sensitive side of her nature, and subdued the sanguine
_insouciance_ of it. She was not happy at Les Hameaux as she had been
happy on Bonaventure; but she was still companioned by many dreams, and
still full of high courage, though the dreams had lost something of
their splendid phantasy, and the courage had lost something of its rash
undoubting faith.
At times she longed for her old playmate, the sea, with a curious
painful yearning--the yearning of the home-sickness of the exile.
'How well I can understand,' she said once to Rosselin, 'that Napoleon
longed all his life for the smell of the earth of Corsica. All my life
I am sure I shall smell the smell of the fresh sea water leaping up in
the wind under the orange boughs and the bay leaves; there is nothing
like it here, though the pastures smell sweet in the dew.'
In a short time she had changed much. She had become still taller, and
the peachlike bloom of her face had paled. She had the look in her eyes
of one who studies assiduously the great thoughts of great writers; she
had a less childlike and boylike beauty, and one more intellectual and
spiritual. Months count as years at her age, and the southern blood of
the Bérardes matured early.
Rosselin watched her growth with pride. Her softened accent, her
subdued gesture, her intelligent comprehension of intellectual things,
her simple but picturesque clothing, were all due to his training or
his suggestion. He had taken her to great libraries, famous galleries,
historic palaces, and had taught her to understand the true and the
false in art; he had taken her to recitals of the Conservatoire,
and even to rehearsals at the great theatres, where, secured from
observation, she could herself observe, and realised, as she listened,
all the many traits and the many efforts which go together to make up
admirable dramatic representation. He never allowed anyone to speak to
her, scarcely to see her, but he gave her thus that training of the eye
and of the ear without which no great artist can be created.
'Nature does much,' he said to her. 'Yes. But art is a different thing
to nature. Art is three parts divine, but it is one part human, and
that human part requires the most unwearied and elaborate training. The
sculptor may bring a god out of the clay in the fire and the fever of
his inspiration, but if he have not studied the laws of anatomy, the
limbs of his god will be out of proportion, and one leg will be shorter
than the other.'
In the artistic circles there went a whisper about that Rosselin had
some paragon whom he was educating, and would produce some day; but
every one feared the sarcastic power of the great artist's tongue too
much to meddle, unasked, with his concerns, and Damaris, under his
guidance, passed unmolested, almost unobserved, through the intricate
mazes of that art-world, which she touched without entering it.
One day, when she had been taken to a recital at the Conservatoire,
he had left her alone for a few moments; the recital was over, the
pupils had left the stage; the professors were conversing together;
from the floor there rose a cloud of dust, and from the hot, pent air a
strong noisome odour. Her eyes ached, her temples throbbed; she, whose
whole life had been passed in the fragrance of the open air, in the
freshness of buoyant sea winds, felt stifled, stunned, nauseated. Fame
itself seemed hateful, approached through this vitiated atmosphere.
To pass your years in boxes of brick and stone, in cages of wood and
iron, rather than in the glad freedom of glancing waters and unchecked
movement over golden sands and flowering meadows, was it not madness
indeed?
She remembered the words of Othmar, bidding her live the life that was
led on the wide cornlands of La Beauce. All that was strong in her,
and born to freedom, and filled with the love of the sea, and the joys
of untrammelled movement through sunlit air, and against fruit-scented
breezes, rose in nausea and revolt against the pent-up life of the
artist in cities.
Where, oh where, was the open-air theatre of the Greeks, with no dome
but the blue sky, and the voices of the chorus echoed by the sounds of
the sea-waves breaking to surf upon the marble stairs?
'What are you thinking of? Your eyes look wild,' said Rosselin,
rejoining her.
'I was thinking that I could never speak upon a covered stage: the air
would choke me!'
Rosselin looked at her in silence. He himself was thinking of Aimée
Desclée, of the _bohémienne_ who had always wanted the fresh air, the
free sunlight, the unpaid laughter, the unbought love.
Aimée Desclée seemed to rise before him, and cry to him:
'Why tempt another on my path?'
He said to her solemnly and tenderly, while his voice sounded very
grave in the silence of the emptied theatre:
'My dear, we cannot call back the Athens of Pindar for you, nor yet
give you the ideal world of your fancy. If you want to be great in our
world as it is, you must breathe its air, which is dust and chokes
sensitive lungs. When the air is gold dust it is not much lighter to
breathe, though people fancy it light as the air of the planet Venus.
If you decide that it will be too weighty for yours, I do not say
that you will not decide wisely. Your friend Othmar has told you that
obscurity and liberty are the happier choice. He is a man who knows by
experience how painful a thraldom are eminence and wealth. You yourself
may attain eminence, and wealth too, possibly, probably, but you cannot
do so and remain free to be all day long under the blue sky. You must
dwell in the air that is full of dust, and poisoned by being shared by
a million mouths. That air killed Aimée Desclée.'
Damaris was silent.
She went out beside him through the sordid ways and shabby passages
of this temple of the acolytes of fame, and thence into the crowded
streets, which were grey with a leaden-coloured slow rain.
Oh, how sweet the rain was in the country, scudding over the green
fields, brimming in the grass holes, hanging from the orchard boughs,
shining in the window lattices, lying in the great dock leaves! How
the snails came out in the glistening roads, and the birds drank it
from off the ground, and the ducks went about in the little shallows it
left, and how merry and glad the whole land was!
'You love the country,' said Rosselin, when they had walked the length
of some streets in silence. 'You love the country, my dear. Stay in it;
you have enough to live on; let fame go by, unsought, unmourned.'
Damaris sighed:
'But if I do not do something great she will always say that I could
not. She will always despise me.'
'Who?'
'His wife.'
'Othmar's?'
'Yes.'
'Ah!' said Rosselin; he understood the motives which moved her more
completely than she understood them herself. 'Do not think of that
capricious woman,' he said with irritation. 'Be sure that the day after
she saw you she had forgotten that you existed.'
The colour rose to the face of Damaris.
'I wish to make her remember,' she said under her breath.
'Ah!' said Rosselin once more.